The system, which comes complete with MS Office 2010, has come under fire from both Mozilla and Google for the limits it places on web browsing.

In a Wednesday blog post, Harvey Anderson, Mozilla’s general counsel, argued that “Windows on ARM – as currently designed – restricts user choice, reduces competition and chills innovation.”

“Windows on ARM prohibits any browser except for Internet Explorer from running in the privileged ‘Windows Classic’ environment,” Anderson wrote. “In practice, this means that only Internet Explorer will be able to perform many of the advanced computing functions vital to modern browsers in terms of speed, stability, and security to which users have grown accustomed. Given that IE can run in Windows on ARM, there is no technical reason to conclude other browsers can’t do the same.”

Google released a statement echoing Mozilla’s concerns.

“We’ve always welcomed innovation in the browser space across all platforms and strongly believe that having great competitors makes us all work harder,” Google said. “In the end, consumers and developers benefit the most from robust competition.”

Microsoft has yet to release a statement on the controversy.

After announcing its much anticipated Google Drive on Tuesday, the company came under fire for the terms and conditions of the service. This sentence is what sent the Internet buzzing:

“Your Content in our Services: When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.”

Google is no stranger to criticism over its privacy policies. The company has come under fire for tracking and storing user behavior to adjust its search result process and targeted ads.

The outrage over the storage center terms and conditions may be over exaggerated though.

Google requires certain licensing rights to deliver on the services that users request, and the language in the terms and conditions is most likely a buffer to protect Google from superfluous lawsuits and guarantee it has the ability to operate its services effectively.

Current property laws require Google to obtain a license to “host, store (and) reproduce” all the files it houses in its data centers. More permissions and rights are required to allow users to access their files as well. When a user needs to translate a document or make revisions, Google needs the rights for “translations, adaptations or other changes.”

As far as the dreaded “publicly” clauses go, Google needs to obtain permissions to “publicly perform” or “publicly display” content when a user wants to open a file in an Internet café or view a picture over a hotel Wi-Fi connection.

In response to the internet complaints, Google released a statement regarding the policy.

“Some of our services allow you to submit content,” Google says in its disclosure. “You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.”

Do you plan on using the Google Drive, or do the terms and conditions raise concern about how your information will be used?

1DollarScan allows you to affordably and conveniently scan those books into PDFs that can be uploaded and read on mobile devices. On Thursday, the company announced its newest feature – “Fine tune.” This upgrade improves the viewing quality of documents and makes the PDFs compatible with all e-readers. The high-quality versions are compatible with all Kindles, Apple devices, Barnes & Noble Nooks and Sony e-readers.

The company’s website is easy to navigate, walking you through each step of the process. One fact that might be a little scary to book-lovers falls in step two: Cut the spine (books only). Yes, in order to achieve a high-quality result, the books are taken apart and then recycled two weeks after the scan is completed. So you won’t get your original version back. If that’s a little too Fahrenheit 451 for you, there’s the option of purchasing a home scanner.

PlusTek sells the OpticBook A300 that can scan a 200-page book in about 20 minutes. The books are converted into e-reader format, and you get to keep the original version. The scanners can cost upwards of $500, and the technology lacks the “fine tune” quality of 1DollarScan, so if you’re not completely attached to your paperbacks, the online service may be more appealing.

1DollarScan claims to be “the most affordable scanning/digitizing solution provider in the world,” and at $3 for a 300-page book, that’s not an outrageous assertion.

The pricing breaks down documents into sets of pages, with each set costing $1. For books, 100 pages is one set; for business documents, 10 pages is one set; and photos are 10 in a set.

The entire process takes about three weeks to ship out, scan and receive the digital versions via email.

For Paul in Canoga Park, California, the convenience of the site was worth the sacrifice of his books.  In his user review of 1DollarScan, Paul said “for some people, giving up a physical library that they can see and touch (and smell) is unthinkable.  For me, the exercise of turning it all into computer files that I can easily take with me wherever I go has been liberating.”

This honor is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our employees, who continuously offer superior service and commitment to our clients.  We are proud to be a leader in our industry and strive to improve and innovate on a daily basis.

Ranked by MSPmentor as #55 in North America and #67 in the world, Network Outsource also owes a great part of its success to our loyal clients, who give us the opportunity to develop and improve our services.

The MSPmentor 100 report is based on data from MSPmentor’s global online survey, conducted from October to December 2011. The MSPmentor 100 report recognizes top managed services providers based on a range of metrics, including annual managed services revenue growth, revenue per employee, managed services offered and customer devices managed.

The complete Global 100 list can be found at http://www.mspmentor.net/top-managed-services-providers-2012-msp-list/

Handling of Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents has been a question mark for users since the iPad was released in 2010.  Apple has iWorks whose handling of MS Office created documents has gotten mixed reviews.  Many 3rd party suites are available and some like Documents To Go and Quickoffice are more than adequate, but there’s still a feeling that many organizations and users alike aren’t taking the iPad as a serious business tool because of MS Office’s MIA status in the App Store.

It will be interesting to see if these latest rumors are true, and if it finally pushes the iPad over the top in the Enterprise.

Have you been waiting on purchasing an Office Suite for your IPad/IPhone?  Will you buy MS Office if it’s released?  Will this finally allow you to leave your laptop behind?

So rather than killing downtime on business trips by playing Angry Birds, instead use your smartphone to experience the city that surrounds you.

Location finder apps like Around Me and Poynt are available on most smartphones. They use your current location to identify restaurants, bars, theaters, shops and almost any other attraction or point of interest in your area. Poynt also includes user reviews to help determine your best options.

If you have a little more time available and want to explore more of a city, you can download a full travel guide app. Most of the big name travel guide companies now offer digital versions of their books. Or you can check their websites for numerous free articles and travel suggestions. The Fodor’s, Frommer’s and Lonely Planet websites are filled with information on destinations worldwide. TripAdvisor is another helpful site, driven almost entirely by user reviews and ratings.

Spotted by Locals provides another handy website and iPhone app with locally written travel guides and reviews of activities and sites in 41 European cities. Wi-Fi Finder for the iPhone uses its GPS function to show where the closest free and paid Wi-Fi hot spots are and includes more than 650,000 locations in 144 countries.

For guided tours, the app HearPlanet, for iPhones and Android phones, provides audio files describing local sights that travelers can listen to as they gaze, walk or ride past in a taxi.

If your time is limited to the airport and boardroom, you can make the most of it with GateGuru. Available on iPhone and Android phones, GateGuru provides information on the food and retail outlets at airports. The app indicates if a store is pre- or post-security, a great feature to help plan your time accordingly.

Whether you have a week of free nights, an afternoon or just an airport layover to see a new city, use your technology to help get the most out of your trip.

The Education Publishing blog put together its top 10 trends and predictions for mobile learning in 2012:

1. Increased proliferation of tablet and smartphones in the market, forcing schools to relent and allow devices into schools. (In 2011 40% of teens had a smartphone).
2. Improved broadband access to account for increased mobile tech use.
3. A surge in “bring your own device” (and the need to accommodate for it) in schools as students use their own mobile tech for school and home learning.
4. Expanded use of e-books and online instructional materials as the main learning resource rather than as supplementary pieces.
5. Rise of digital content curation services to help users make sense of all available resources.
6. Growth in creation of and use of open source materials that allow for greater collaboration and cross-device use.
7. Further integration of social networking integrated into learning to increase student collaboration and connections with teachers.
8. Move to cloud computing and online classroom management systems that gather student achievement data and allow for more personalized instruction.
9. Adoption of the flipped classroom, where the traditional lecture is accessed at home through videos or podcasts, and the students spend their class time working with teachers and peers on projects, discussions and collaborative learning.
10. Explosion of “truly educational gaming.”

Which of these trends are you most interested in? Have you begun utilizing mobile technology in your classroom?

A 36-second video on NASA’s Earth Observatory website highlights the globe’s snow activity through rapid-paced images shot from Space.

Starting with a snow-covered map of the Earth in February 2000, the video tracks snow presence up until November 2011. The images were collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite.

The level of snow coverage ranges from medium blue (greater than 0 percent) to white (100 percent). Landmasses that do not sustain snow cover and places where MODIS did not collect data are gray.

According to NASA, “because MODIS relies on visible light to assess snow cover, the sensor cannot collect data over the highest latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere during winter when no sunlight reaches those regions”.

The company recently acquired more than 450 titles from Marshall Cavendish Children’s Books, and it plans to digitize all of the works through Amazon Publishing, making them available solely on the Kindle.

Up until the release of its tablet, Amazon was at a disadvantage in the young reader market. Older versions of the Kindle could not compete with the graphics and interactive capabilities of the iPad. But the new device’s full-color touch screen is now capable of handling all the special effects that make children’s books standout on tablets.

And Amazon is using its influence in the publishing industry to enter the market at full force. Some of the titles include, The Night Before Christmas, illustrated by Gennady Spirin, Three Littles Tamales by Eric A. Kimmel, Chalk by Bill Thomson, Yellow Star by Jennifer Roy and National Book Award finalist My Name is Not Easy by Debby Dahl Edwardson. Most of these titles have never been published digitally.

“This is our first attempt to get organized around a children’s books strategy,” Jeff Belle, the vice president of Amazon Publishing, said. “This is a case where there’s a great list of books that have not been digitized.”

Do you think by tapping into its popularity as a bookseller Amazon’s Kindle will overtake the iPad?

With no other tablet, save Windows devices, currently running MS Office, the new Excel, Word and PowerPoint apps will give the iPad yet another serious advantage in a field it already dominates. And tapping into the iPad’s overwhelming popularity can only help Microsoft gain favor among Apple’s zealous fan base.

And of course Office users and iPad fanatics alike can rejoice in this union – particularly at the low cost of $10 per app, which is what The Daily is suggesting Microsoft will charge. So where is the downside?

Well, the low price, aimed to compete with Apple’s current version of a business suite, iWorks, offers up a challenge to both Apple and Microsoft products.

The iWorks bundle, which consists of Pages, Numbers and Keynote (i-answers to Word, Excel and PowerPoint), is a far-less popular and functional business application. With the Microsoft version now coming to the iPad at the same price, it could spell death for iWorks.

Another possible casualty in this merger could be Microsoft’s bread and butter – the Windows and OS X versions of MS Office, which according to The Daily, are the company’s second highest generator of revenue behind only Windows. The high price of the suite, which can run several hundred dollars without an education discount, is a common complaint among users. Excel, Word and PowerPoint priced at $10 a piece offers a significant appeal to these customers.

Mary Jo Foley of the All About Microsoft blog from ZDNet offers this possible strategy for Microsoft to break into the iPad market without wiping out sales of its desktop products:

“There is another way Microsoft could deliver Office on the iPad with less risk of cannibalizing sales of full-fledged/full-priced versions. The Starter version of Office 2010 is available only when preinstalled by Windows PC makers. It is basically reduced-functionality, ad-supported, free versions of Word and Excel meant to hook users in and convince them to upgrade to a full-fledged version of the product by buying an activation code. Could Microsoft use a similar strategy on iPads without requiring Apple to preload the SKU — and instead allowing users to grab a stripped-down Word and Excel combo for the iPad from the App Store, hoping they’ll ultimately be willing to shell out more for a full version of the suite?”

Whatever Microsoft’s plan of monetizing this partnership with the iPad is, the joining of the business software giant and the superstar tablet is certain to transform the way content is created and the devices users choose to work with.